Hello all,

My DS is struggling to spot the type of maths question it is asking. (measurement conversion, mulitplication etc).
She generally gets them right given enough time. But what takes her the most time is figuring out what sort of question is being asked.
Once she identifies that she can answer it. But it's the time it takes before she gets to the arithmetic.

Can anyone suggest anything to help speed this part of the question up?

Many thanks

There's some help here (albeit MATH instead of Maths!) - I'm sure there are plenty of others if you google https://www.purplemath.com/modules/translat.htm

Also try it the other way round. Take a simple arithmetic sum and take it in turns to dream up more and more elaborate stories that could lead to it. TBH this is one of the hardest skills for many of the pupils I support up to GCSE level too, often because their reading/vocab skills need work . Just talk about numbers, and size concepts, and comparisons, all the time using as many different words for things as possible.

Accuracy over speed first.

After some practice with similar questions, she'll get quicker. My DS was exactly the same but I was pleased he was getting them right. After some practice he got bored as they were getting easier
We them moved to another topic and now revisiting the problems from before. His speed has not diminished so it does work.
Don't stress.

This was exactly the reaction of students who sat the Maths papers at DAO and QE last year.

The questions were so wordy that it was hard to work out what they were actually being asked.

This is where a student reading challenging texts will have a real advantage.

Have a go at posing questions verbally and just ask her to tell you what Maths the question requires rather than actually working it out.

This problems gets a lot worse for GCSE and A level with students not actually answering the question in front of them but a different question.

Some students sitting Latymer VR last year were insistent that there was a new type of VR not encountered before in the test.

Others say there was not.

Was it just asked in such a different way that it seemed new? DG